Stacy Jenel Smith – AARPhttp://blog.aarp.org
Fri, 09 Dec 2016 15:32:50 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1Stefanie Powers Still a Globe-Trotting Activisthttp://blog.aarp.org/2015/01/23/stefanie-powers-still-a-globe-trotting-activist/
http://blog.aarp.org/2015/01/23/stefanie-powers-still-a-globe-trotting-activist/#respondFri, 23 Jan 2015 22:03:58 +0000http://blog.aarp.org/?p=113086 Stefanie Powers gives no hint of jet lag during an afternoon conversation – despite having flown in to Los Angeles a night earlier from Kenya, by way of New York. Youthful, dynamic and beautiful at 72, the red-haired actress also gives no hint of slowing down. She divides her time between performing, globetrotting and the wildlife conservation issues that melded with her animal-loving nature during her near-decade-long love affair with the late William Holden back in the 1970s.

She is here to talk about Love by the Book, the Hallmark Channel Original Movie debuting tomorrow (January 24), in which she has a small role as proprietress of a book store coffee bar – a woman attuned to the romantic and business woes of young store owner Leah Renee.

“They have a wonderful formula – putting the young ones who have the problems with the older ones who have the voices of wisdom,” she says of the cable channel’s exceedingly popular flicks. Powers admits she’s surprised by some of the Hallmark Channel devotees she has come across, “friends of mine who are terribly sophisticated, who you might expect to dismiss these movies as too corny. They love them.”

Of course, a few of her friends are emoting for the Hallmark Channel cameras themselves – like former Hart to Hart leading man Robert Wagner, who recently did a Santa Claus cameo, along with wife Jill St. John as Mrs. C., in Northpole. The thought of a Wagner-Powers reunion movie makes Powers smile. “Any chance to work with him I’d love,” she says.

Most of the work she’d like to do is in theater, and she has plans brewing both for the West End and Broadway this year and next. Powers maintains homes in Los Angeles, London and Kenya and travels often. She’d love to see more of Mongolia, where she enjoyed playing polo. She’s also played polo riding an elephant in Nepal. As if that weren’t extreme enough, a few months ago, the life-long rider tried extreme cowboy racing, which combines cowboy skills with an obstacle course.

“I had so much fun, I can’t wait to do it again,” she says.

In 2009, Powers lost her mother, with whom she was very close, and fought lung cancer. She says she came out of it healthy, but with an intensified awareness of the passage of time, and a more acute desire to accomplish things she wants to do. Those things include saving endangered species — a passion she shared with Tom Carroll, one of the directors of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation she established in 1982, and her long-time partner until his death last year. She sadly admits the battles to save creatures on the brink of extinction are fraught with terrible frustration.

“I’m not sure I don’t get disheartened, but I’m also angry – and if you still have anger in your belly, you do something about it,” declares the actress, who works not only through her Foundation, but is involved in efforts to save jaguars in Central America, wild horses in North America, and elephants in Africa.

Marco Polo, the next big thing from Netflix, will land at last on Friday after being buffeted for weeks in a media storm of questions, among them: Will the lavish limited series help Netflix in its quest to capture ground in the international marketplace? Will the $90 million production, filmed in Italy, Kazakhstan and Malaysia, top the streaming company’s stellar successes with House of Cards and Orange is the New Black? Will the release designed for binge-watching (all 10 hours of the first season will become available at once) make a star of Italian newcomer Lorenzo Richelmy? And, will 13th century China be the next big thing?

There is bloody violence aplenty in this saga, from the very start. But if watching gouging and impaling is not for you, this is one to pass. There’s also a naked martial arts fight. There are remarkable vistas and gorgeous people in glorious costumes. The court of Kublai Khan rises out of the mists of history.

“It was really, really challenging shooting in regions where we had no infrastructure,” recounts John Fusco, who created the series that counts Harvey Weinstein among its executive producers. “We literally did have sleepless nights, driving hours and hours just to get back to our lodgings. Then we’d be staying up working on material for the next day. But to have a project you’ve been working on for so long come to fruition like this is just an amazing experience.”

Fusco says he wasn’t thinking about the international marketing. “I was just true to Marco Polo’s accounts and the spirit of those accounts. There’s nothing in the show that was ever grafted on to follow any kind of trend. There was never a point of saying, ‘Oh, a lot of these TV shows have nudity and sexuality, we should throw some in.’ It was never the case.”

Notes Fusco, “Marco Polo went through a sexual awakening in his travels, and he dedicates almost an entire chapter to the eye opening experience he had in the Pleasure Dome of Kublai Khan, and how sex in ancient China was more of an art form. That’s some of the information that he brought back. The same thing with martial arts.”

After an exhaustive casting search, Fusco found 24-year-old Italian Richelmy to play his lead. He had very much hoped for an Italian, since the story of Marco Polo had never been filmed with an actor of the proper nationality before.

Among the rest of the cast, 53-year-old Joan Chen is a standout.

“Joan has a history with this project going back a few years ago, when she read my initial pilot,” Fusco says. “It was a case where she really reached out and showed a special interest in the character.” In his view, “The Empress Chabi is one of the strongest leaders in world history — a fascinating character who was an excellent horsewoman and skilled with a bow, and also highly educated. She was into charity; nobody went hungry in the empire. She was an early environmentalist who passed laws not to waste bow strings but had them recycled into clothing.

“She was really Kublai’s number one unofficial adviser. It’s well known in history, behind closed doors, it was Chabi who was guiding Kublai. It was Chabi who always said, ‘You have to win over the hearts and minds of the people through compassion. You can’t go in like your grandfather and burn the place down.”

Marco Polo may not attain the must-watch status of its predecessors, but it is worth sampling. And if you find it is not your style, you can always turn to a surefire bet: the acclaimed 1980 West-meets-East Shogun mini series starring Richard Chamberlain, to which it will no doubt be compared. Shogun is also available on Netflix.

Ever since Anita Diamant’s 1997 novel, The Red Tent, blew up into a global best seller — with a reported 3.3 million copies in 28 languages sold — fans have debated what it would be like to see the Bible-inspired work come to life on film. Lifetime answers that question Dec. 7 and 8 with its miniseries adaptation starring Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible 5) as Dinah, daughter of the biblical Jacob; Minnie Driver as Leah, Dinah’s mother; Morena Baccarin (Homeland) as Rachel, Jacob’s beloved second wife; and Debra Winger as Jacob’s mother, Rebecca. It’s sexy and exotic, with sumptuous images of biblical women communing together in the private confines of their “earthbound rainbow” shelter and otherwise dealing with life amid the windswept wastes of antiquity.

So, what does the author think? “I’m happy about a lot,” says Diamant, 63, who has authored four other novels as well as seven guidebooks on Jewish living. But mostly she likes “the way that it’s true to the message of women as strong and competent.” She’s also pleased with the mini’s faithfulness in depicting “the importance of women’s relationships with each other — friendships and family relationships.”

The sense of a feminine family extended into the real-life relationships that grew among the cast members on location in Morocco, according to Morena Baccarin. The actress tells us that one of her biggest takeaways from the experience was “the camaraderie we all developed together roughing it in the desert. I wish we had a modern-day red tent,” she adds. “It would be really helpful.”

Diamant says she is no fan of violence but was pleased with how the two-parter handles a particularly disturbing sequence, straight from the pages of Genesis as well as her book, in which Dinah’s brothers take bloody revenge on the Canaanite prince and all the male members of his tribe after the prince rapes Dinah, or, as The Red Tent imagines it, after she and he embark on a passionate romance.

“It’s made with great heart and love, and parts I think they did brilliantly,” the author says of the miniseries. But,“I’m not comfortable talking about it in detail. I made the choice to have them make the movie, not me.” Diamant says readers have told her how excited they are and how much they wanted to see it on screen. “That’s just lovely. And the promotion … It’s an otherworldly, very cool experience.”

However, Diamant still prefers to write books and has a new one publishing Dec. 9, a turn-of-the-20th-century tome, The Boston Girl. Like her other fiction, it brings to life the lesser-heard voices of history, women’s voices.

Thursday’s Peter Pan Live!, at 8 p.m. ET,would be must-see TV if for no other reason than 71-year-old Christopher Walken dancing as the villainous Captain Hook. The singular star of Deer Hunter, Hairspray and many a Saturday Night Live sketch has fond memories of tap lessons as a kid. He asked the show’s producers to go heavy on the terpsichorean turns in this version of the beloved musical. His will be the dancingest Hook ever, they promised on last week’s pre-show special, The Making of Peter Pan Live!

“Dancing with a hat on, think about it,” Walken invited, in a very Walken moment, while viewers at home scratched their heads.

Of course, Walken and Allison Williams, the 26-year-old actress from Girls, who also happens to be NBC news anchor Brian Williams’ daughter, have a couple of tough acts to follow. First, for those of us who have cherished memories of Peter Pan with Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard, there are the NBC versions which aired live and had the original Broadway cast in 1955, 1958 and the taped, in-color 1960 version. Must-see TV at its finest, the ’55 version drew the largest ratings for a single television program up to that time. Second, however, is the The Sound of Music Live, starring Carrie Underwood, which got heady ratings last year. With 18.5 million viewers on the night of broadcast, it was the most-watched Thursday night program on NBC since the E.R. finale in 2009. The network would like those kind of numbers for Pan.

Producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, the forces behind both shows, hope to make live TV musicals into a holiday season tradition. NBC already has The Music Man rights in hand as a possibility for next year.

Thursday night’s version contains the best-known numbers — “I’m Flying,” “I Won’t Grow Up,” “Never Never Land” — and some new songs as well. That is, it has songs that are new to Peter Pan. The team adapted material from the catalogues of Jule Style, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who contributed to the original Broadway show, to fit their live musical desires.

The live production also features Broadway veterans Christian Borle as Mr. Darling/Smee and Kelli O’Hara as Mrs. Darling, and Minnie Driver as the grown up Wendy/narrator. They have winning young performers Taylor Louderman, Jake Lucas and John Allyn as the Darling children, a real dog playing the dog, Nana, instead of an actor in a dog suit. And they have brought the bright shining forces of digital effects to everyone’s favorite pouty little diva, Tinker Bell.

Get ready to clap your hands, Peter Pan fans. It may be time to believe in ratings fairies.

]]>http://blog.aarp.org/2014/12/02/nbc-hopes-for-big-ratings-with-thursdays-peter-pan/feed/0'Downton Abbey Rediscovered' Teases Season 5http://blog.aarp.org/2014/11/26/downton-abbey-rediscovered-teases-season-5/
http://blog.aarp.org/2014/11/26/downton-abbey-rediscovered-teases-season-5/#respondWed, 26 Nov 2014 19:06:40 +0000http://blog.aarp.org/?p=107577Downton Abbey fans who’ve been dying for disclosures about Lady Mary and her suitors, thirsting for tidings of Mr. Bates’ implication in the death of Mr. Green, or craving bon mots from the dowager countess, get ready for a big tease. PBS’s Downton Abbey Rediscovered airs Sunday, November 30 — amidst its post-Thanksgiving pledge drive — offering tantalizing morsels from the banquet of drama coming in Season 5 as well as Bernadette Peters wryly introducing favorite moments from the past four seasons.

And while it’s fun for fervent fans to relive those upstairs and downstairs events, Downton Abbey Rediscovered shares just enough about the coming season to pique curiosity and raise questions. Whose wedding is that? What do you mean, something shady in Violet Crawley’s (Maggie Smith) past will be revealed? We’re told Lady Edith will be less inclined to be told no and to allow other people to prevent her happiness. So what is she doing unconscious in her room when fire breaks out?

Of course, industrious internet explorers can find answers; Season 5 has been airing for months in Great Britain. There has been a media clamor, particularly loud last January, over Downton seasons airing so much later in the U.S. than in the United Kingdom. Beth Hoppe, Chief Programming Officer and General Manager, General Audience Programming for PBS, assured that if it appeared the delay was hurting the show, PBS would consider changes.

Bernadette Peters rediscover Downton Abbey

For now, Hoppe says, Downton ended Season 4 with 13.2 million viewers. “The rating was an 8.5 national household rating, and if you compare that to PBS’s primetime average rating, which is 1.5, it’s hard to say there is any possibility that we did anything wrong.” And viewership was up from Season 3 so Hoppe says it’s unlikely PBS will change the schedule. The new season begins in January.

Downton Abbey viewers appear to be in a class by themselves when it comes to learning plot revelations in advance, or exercising enough self-discipline to keep from doing so. “I know people who try to avoid the spoilers,” says Hoppe. “There are others who don’t mind the spoilers. It gets them excited. They want to know everything and then they still want to watch. We have events across the country with PBS stations where people come dressed in costume to enjoy the Downton experience. It’s a thing of its own.”

More than 40 actors who are 50 and older are among the anointed ones nominated for Emmys this year. With the 66th Annual Prime Time Emmy Awards coming Monday, Aug. 25, here are five reasons so many veterans got nominations.

1. Oscar-winning movie actors have moved to TV. Jessica Lange, Jon Voight, Ellen Burstyn. It will look like a 1970s’ Academy Awards ceremony, not the 2014 Emmys, when they and others of their era trip down the red carpet Monday night. Those movie stars, with nods for American Horror Story: Coven, Ray Donovan and Flowers in the Attic, respectively, are among a migration of A-list talent of all ages moving to the small screen.

“The movie world has changed drastically, particularly in the last five or six years,” Billy Bob Thornton explained at a TV critics gathering earlier this year. Thornton, a lead actor nominee for FX’s Fargo, is among those who believe: “For actors who want to do good dramatic work, with dark humor and drama, you have to do it on television.”

2. The number of outlets that offer challenging acting work is increasing. Netflix made Emmy history last year when House of Cards, a political drama starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, earned nine nominations. This year Netflix broke more records with 31 nominations (including 13 for House of Cards and 12 for Orange Is the New Black). Starz is a player this year with 11 nominations for The White Queen and Dancing on the Edge, while the Independent Film Channel is in the game with eight nods for Portlandia and Spoils of Babylon. Next year, who knows? Amazon and Yahoo are now in the original production game.

3. The traditional Big-Four networks are producing great stuff. Perennial Emmy winners including NBC’s Modern Family and CBS’s The Big Bang Theory have kept the bar high and been rewarded with more nominations. Although CBS’s The Good Wife and Fox’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine are among this year’s most glaring Emmy snubs, their actors are well-represented (Julianna Margulies, Christine Baranski, Josh Charles and Dylan Baker in the former; Andre Braugher in the latter). Of course, the established pay cable outlets continue to rule. With its Game of Thrones receiving 19 Emmy nominations and its True Detective and Newsroom also among top nominees, HBO dominates the Emmy Awards for the 14th consecutive year – this time with a whopping 99 nominations.

Anna Gunn, Bryan Cranston: Breaking Bad

4. It’s all about the part. and there are some great ones for 50-plus actors. From steely Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) in The Good Wife to the scene-stealing Dowager Countess Violet Crawley (Maggie Smith) in Downton Abbey to the coarse and inept president (by default) of the United States Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) on Veep and the unscrupulous management consultant Marty Kaan (Don Cheadle) on House of Lies, it’s a golden age of memorable characters.

5. TV is telling mature people’s stories in a compelling way. Consider Allison Janney, who beat Jane Fonda and Diana Rigg, among others, for her Outstanding Guest Actress Emmy at this past weekend’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards. She won for playing a woman in midlife discovering sexuality in the 1950s on Showtime’s Masters of Sex.

After her win, the actress declared that the Sex story “challenged me in ways that I’ve never been challenged before as an actress on so many levels – on an emotional level, on a physical level – and having to do sex scenes was extraordinarily nerve-wracking and stressful for me and something that I didn’t think I’d have to do at this age, frankly.” Janney (already a four-time Emmy winner for The West Wing) isn’t done yet. She’s also up for an Emmy Monday night for her work as a grateful recovering addict and mother to Anna Faris in the CBS comedy Mom. Nice work for a career second act.

]]>http://blog.aarp.org/2014/08/21/why-so-many-50-plus-actors-got-emmy-nods/feed/0http://blog.aarp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/coven_lange_hires1.jpghttp://blog.aarp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/coven_lange_hires1-185x185.jpg‘The Honorable Woman’ Creator Fan of Great 70’s Spy Thrillershttp://blog.aarp.org/2014/08/06/the-honorable-woman-creator-fan-of-great-70s-spy-thrillers/
http://blog.aarp.org/2014/08/06/the-honorable-woman-creator-fan-of-great-70s-spy-thrillers/#respondWed, 06 Aug 2014 14:06:25 +0000http://blog.aarp.org/?p=88095A first-class, cerebral mystery/espionage thriller set amidst the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, British auteur Hugo Blick’s “The Honorable Woman” has become one of the most talked-about television dramas of the summer. Its title star, Maggie Gyllenhaal, has said she is more proud of the eight-part mini series than anything else she’s done in her career. Its supporting cast, including Stephen Rea and Janet McTeer as British agents, is absolutely brilliant. And of course, it could not be more timely.

Blick noted that he could not have predicted that his latest offering would come at a time when war was raging in Gaza. Speaking at the recent Television Critics Association summer press tour, he said of the conflict, “It is cyclical. And it has now tragically become this hot spot yet again. It will abate, and then it will happen again. And the idea of this cycle was something that I was engaged in.”

This is the story of Anglo-Israeli businesswoman Nessa Stein (Gyllenhaal), the titular honorable woman who is fraught with threats and secrets, has a panic room and is under such stress as to make her occasionally crack. As a child, she witnessed the assassination of her father, an Israeli arms dealer, and now, as head of the family business, she is engaged in turning their legacy into a positive, “laying cables for telephone, for the Internet — millions of miles of communication” in the Palestinian territories. “Terror thrives in poverty. It dies in wealth,” declares Stein, who is made a baroness by the British Government in recognition of her peace-making efforts. However, even as she announces her latest plans, the Palestinian she has contracted to lead the project is hanging dead outside his hotel room, the victim of a very suspicious-looking suicide. His probable murder and the kidnaping of the son of a family staff member are the two mysteries that underpin the series going forward.

Blick (“The Shadow Line,” “Sensitive Skin”) is an avowed admirer of such “post-Nixon, pre-Reagan” thrillers as “Three Days of the Condor” and “The Parallax View” and it shows. “The Honorable Woman” has also been likened to the work of Jean Le Carre. Certainly, like Le Carre, he expects his audience to pay attention and keep up with the complexities of his storytelling.

Blick’s world is populated by fully-dimensional women. Janet McTeer, who was also at the TCA panel, complained about movies that have 1,700 parts for guys but just three women, who all have to be gorgeous and under 25. She also made it clear she’s fed up with movie roles that require women to wear shoulder pads and talk and behave like men. Gyllenhaal admitted she likes wearing shoulder pads, but otherwise found much to agree with in McTeer’s statement.

As for whether “The Honorable Woman” will spawn a second season, it appears not. “Part of the trust we offer the audience is that it’s this story,” Blick told critics. “We’re not trying to wink and say ‘Maybe there’s another one.’ It’s got something profoundly engaging to say…because the conclusion it takes is final.”

This Sundance TV (in cooperation with the BBC) limited series will also be available for viewing on Netflix.

During the promotional ramp-up to the July 9 premiere of Halle Berry’s new CBS show Extant, Berry talked comparisons to Rosemary’s Baby and series creator Mickey Fisher referenced a “Joseph and Mary moment,” in which shocked husband Goran Visnjic learns that his astronaut wife (Berry) got pregnant while on a 13-month solo mission in space. So just what has she got gestating? Is it the devil or something divine? More important to CBS, will she deliver a hit, or a big-budget miss?

Let’s bet on the former. Steven Spielberg is executive producer, and his imprint is evident from the series’ luxe look to its Spielbergian cinematic tension. Beyond the matinee-style thrills, there is food for thought, too. With a creepy artificially-intelligent son and a scientist husband who does not believe in the existence of human souls, Berry’s character certainly has a lot of big issues with which to contend.

Weeks ahead of its premiere, the series was already a water cooler show. In part that’s because, As CBS Entertainment Chairman Nina Tassler told the crowd at Extant‘s blue carpet premiere last month, “Getting Halle Berry was one of the biggest coups of the year for television.”

But there’s plenty beyond the casting of Berry to stir talk: Her payday of a reported $100,000-plus per episode, her co-executive producer credit, the fun fact that first daughter Malia Obama secretly served as a production assistant on the show, and the origin of Extant. Fisher is a first-timer who entered his spec script in a contest and ended up living every writer’s fantasy.

Berry and Goran Visnjic are a married couple in Extant

Berry makes it clear that she is among the stars who think the best writing, particularly for women, is on television now. She found the script unpredictable and her character strong, complicated, and like nothing she’d played before. It also came along at a time when she was clearly ready. She’s 47 and has nine-month-old son Maceo and six-year-old daughter Nahla at home; CBS “did me a solid,” she said, by making it possible for the series to shoot in L.A. so she could be with her children and husband Olivier Martinez between camera calls.

Of course, CBS believes she’s worth it. Whether viewers will see Berry’s strong performance anchoring all this extraterrestrial drama the same way? We’ll see July 9.

]]>http://blog.aarp.org/2014/07/03/halle-berrys-extant-expect-big-things/feed/0Tom Bergeron Hosts PBS July Fourth Showhttp://blog.aarp.org/2014/07/02/tom-bergeron-hosts-pbs-july-fourth-show/
http://blog.aarp.org/2014/07/02/tom-bergeron-hosts-pbs-july-fourth-show/#respondWed, 02 Jul 2014 16:07:39 +0000http://blog.aarp.org/?p=82848Tom Bergeron loves hosting live TV shows. No surprise, then, to hear him rhapsodize about his upcoming emcee duties for A Capitol Fourth on PBS; it’s a super-sized version of his thrill of choice.

“To walk out on that stage on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol, in front of hundreds of thousands of people on the National Mall – and knowing you’re being beamed to millions more around the world – is one of the highlights of my career,” declares the man whose hosting prowess has earned him both daytime (Hollywood Squares) and prime-time (Dancing With the Stars) Emmy awards.

“Kermit and I get along famously,” deadpans Bergeron, “but I’ll be honest, I’ve had some issues with Miss Piggy. I’m hoping it doesn’t get ugly; she can be very temperamental.”

The 33rd such televised Independence Day event, A Capitol Fourth features “so much that’s going to be wonderful,” says Bergeron. “It’s the 200th anniversary of our National Anthem, and [five-time Oscar-winning composer] John Williams is going to conduct a special arrangement of it for orchestra and chorus. That will be a special moment in a special show.”

Times are changing for Bergeron, who recently decided to end his 15-year run as host of America’s Funniest Home Videos. Facing life as empty-nesters now that daughters Jessica and Samantha are grown, Bergeron and his wife of more than three decades, Lois, plan to capitalize on his freer schedule by traveling more. Retirement doesn’t seem to interest the 59-year-old, however; he’s open to “being surprised” by new work opportunities.

Dancing With the Stars, meanwhile, just keeps hoofing on. Does its appeal start to pale after 18 seasons? “No, I love it,” says Bergeron. “We already touched on one of the reasons: It’s live TV. And every cast brings its own personalities and peculiarities. This last season, happily, our ratings went up when a lot of reality competition shows were going in the other direction.” (The new cast will be announced in late August.)

Coincidentally, A Capitol Fourth will reunite Bergeron with several DWTS alumni – not just Kermit and Miss Piggy from Season 13, but Sara Evans from Season 3. And he looks forward to reconnecting with other Capitol guests in an entirely new setting: “I fly the L.A.-to-New York leg a lot,” says Bergeron, “and Frankie Valli and I are on the same flights periodically. The last time I chatted with him, Jersey Boys was in production and Frankie had been visiting Clint Eastwood on the set. It’ll be great to see him without breathing recirculated air on an airplane.”

]]>http://blog.aarp.org/2014/07/02/tom-bergeron-hosts-pbs-july-fourth-show/feed/0Whoopi Goldberg: Acting Is All I Ever Wantedhttp://blog.aarp.org/2014/04/15/whoopi-goldberg-acting-is-all-i-ever-wanted-to-do/
http://blog.aarp.org/2014/04/15/whoopi-goldberg-acting-is-all-i-ever-wanted-to-do/#respondTue, 15 Apr 2014 21:44:47 +0000http://blog.aarp.org/?p=68386Watching Whoopi Goldberg in Lifetime’s A Day Late and a Dollar Short, to air Saturday April 19, you may find yourself thinking that we haven’t been seeing enough of The View host’s Oscar-winning acting skills in recent years. She reminds us in this movie of just how good she is.

The film puts her at the center of another scenario by novelist Terry McMillan (Goldberg was in How Stella Got Her Groove Back, you may recall) and reunites her with Ving Rhames, who played her husband in the excellent film Long Walk Home. Mehki Phifer, Kimberly Elise, Tichina Arnold and Anika Noni Rose are on board as her son and daughters, each of whom has a sorely messed-up life. They don’t get along with each other either.

Into this mix comes a life-threatening ailment for Goldberg’s grouchy matriarch character, Viola – and it changes everything. At least, it changes everything for Viola. As Goldberg herself tells us, Viola is “a bit of an ass. She has been absent from her own self. Like 98 percent of the people you meet in the world, she’s just trying to get through her life. And then she realizes, ‘Oh sh–, I’d better get on top of this. I’m dying.'”

Viola doesn’t share her bad news with the fractious family, Goldberg explains. “That’s the thing that I think is great about this piece. It’s a cautionary tale: you never know what tomorrow will bring. Get your act together.”

Goldberg certainly has hers together. During an afternoon’s chat, she takes the conversation from philosophical peaks to the depths of a profoundly raunchy observation involving bodily changes as one ages, Mount Kilamanjaro and bandleader Paul Shaffer. (Trust us, it’s wild. Just think of Goldberg with that Cheshire Cat/Buddha knowing smile, nodding sagely and intoning, “You know what I’m talking about.”)

She says she can relate to her character because they are both getting older, “But I’m having much more fun than she is.”

See Whoopi Goldberg in conversation with Jay Leno during Life@50+ Boston May 8-10, 2014.

Goldberg is a new great-grandmother at 58 – granddaughter Amarah Dean gave birth to a girl, Charlie Rose, on March 15. How does it feel?

“It’s kind of a little freaky, but I have a 25-year-old granddaughter. You know, my daughter was very young when she had her daughter, so it’s sort of balancing out. But it’s kind of funny. I was a grandmother from the age of 33. When you look at it that way, it makes sense.”

As for whether it’s fun to have a tiny one around again, she doesn’t sound entranced. “Eyyeahh,” she says slowly. “I don’ t know about that. I’m going to go visit with them next week and meet this new baby. She looks cool.”

We’ll soon be seeing more of Goldberg, the actress, than has been seen in quite awhile. In addition to A Day Late and a Dollar Short, there’s her role in the Aug. 8 Paramount release Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the big-screen drama Big Stone Gap, due later this year. She has film roles in the works for James Franco and Chris Rock, was to shoot a stint on Glee and, in August, will begin production on a film called The Christmas Pearl, in which she’ll play a ghost. She also directed an HBO documentary on Jackie “Moms” Mabley that comes out on DVD and digital streaming May 20.

“What’s old is new,” she observes. “I guess fans who have grown up and become directors go, ‘Hey, I’d like to do something with you.’ People remember that they want you, and that’s a great thing. And they remember what you can do, and that’s a great thing,” she adds happily.

However, the new flurry of work is also due to her own efforts. “You have to put it out there,” she says. “I love being an actor. It’s the only thing I ever wanted to do.”